Tonight's Sky: October

Produced by the Space Telescope Science Institute’s Office of Public Outreach in collaboration with NASA’s Universe of Learning partners: Caltech/IPAC, Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and Sonoma State University.

Musical track The Far River written by John Serrie, from the album And the Stars Go With You, courtesy of New World Music, Ltd. 

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 Text, October. Tonight's Sky. Constellations. Stylized drawings of a lion, a ram, and a bull. 

East, 8:30 PM. Looking up at a night sky filled with stars. Text, The crisp, clear nights of October are full of celestial showpieces for the backyard sky gazer. 

A constellation shaped like a large square with three prongs emerging from the side. Text, Face the southeast after dark to find Pegasus, the flying horse of Greek myth, soaring high into the sky. An image of an upside-down winged horse appears over the constellation, its head and front legs forming the three prongs. Text, The prominent square of stars that forms the body makes Pegasus a good guidepost for the autumn sky. Along the western side of the great square of Pegasus lies the star 41 Pegasi. It is notable as the first Sun-like star discovered to harbor an orbiting planet. Farther west, near the star Enif, which marks the horse's nose, lies an entire city of stars, the globular star cluster M15. Ground-based view. An image of a tight cluster of stars that glows brightly at the center. Text, Backyard telescopes show a grainy concentrated sphere of light. 

Zoom in on the cluster. A brilliant and tightly packed field of stars in white, blue, and reddish tones, concentrated at a bright central point. Text, Visible light. NASA's Hubble Space Telescope shows a stunning globe of ancient stars with many red giants. M15 is one of the densest globular star clusters known in the Milky Way galaxy. Near the great square resides an even larger star city, the galaxy NGC 7331. Ground-based view, An image of a flat bright disk-shaped galaxy. Text, In a telescope, the nearly edge-on spiral galaxy appears as an elongated smudge of faint light. Zoom in on the galaxy, a central point glowing golden with arms of reddish-brown clouds spiraling outwards. Red and white stars scatter across the galaxy. Text, Visible light. The Hubble view shows that NGC 7331 is a galaxy very similar in size and structure to our own. Another view of the galaxy with a bluish center and orange spiral arms. Text, NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope view of the galaxy, which highlights infrared light, reveals a ring of dust circling the galaxy's center at a radius of nearly 20,000 light-years. Spitzer measurements suggest that the ring contains enough gas to produce four billion stars like the Sun. The brightest star of the Pegasus Great Square, named Alpheratz, marks the head of the princess Andromeda. A constellation forming a bent line with a shorter line protruding perpendicular to it. A drawing of a robed woman with shackles on her hands appears over the line. Text, Beside the Andromeda constellation is M31, the Andromeda Galaxy. Visible in dark skies as an elongated patch of light, the galaxy at 2.5 million light-years distant, is the farthest object that can be seen with the unaided eye. Ground-based view, an image of a diagonal disk-shaped galaxy. Text, Binoculars and small telescopes clearly show its nearly edge-on shape. Zoom in on the galaxy. A bright central point surrounded by spiraling clouds of dust filled with bright white stars. Text, NASA's GALEX mission imaged the ultraviolet light from the Andromeda Galaxy. The image shows its core and spiral arms traced by hot, massive young blue stars and dark dust lanes. Andromeda is the nearest large galaxy to our own. Studies indicate that Andromeda is approaching and will collide and merge with the Milky Way more than four billion years from now. Enjoy the patterns of stars, star clusters, and galaxies on clear October nights. Celestial wonders await you in Tonight's Sky.